


Broken Fingers, I'll Hold Your Hand Again Someday

by ThePrincePeach



Series: The corpse in the corner begins to weep at what was taken from him. [3]
Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Depression, Dialogue Heavy, Epilepsy, Grief/Mourning, Jeremy doesn't know how to function anymore, Memories, Nightmares, Other, Past Character Death, Past Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Seizures, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:08:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25233649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePrincePeach/pseuds/ThePrincePeach
Summary: Jeremy and Mike's brother have a talk. Some questions never have an answer. People are dead and Jeremy doesn't know how to handle it.
Series: The corpse in the corner begins to weep at what was taken from him. [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1815121
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Broken Fingers, I'll Hold Your Hand Again Someday

**Author's Note:**

> Meet Brenton, Mike's older brother and legal guardian. He has some questions. Jeremy has the answers. Neither know how to go about it correctly.

Jeremy liked to smile. He was always smiling, always laughing, always joking around and playing around and having a delightful time. He opened his arms to all, giving the warmest hugs filled with love and care and his fullest heart into them. To him, earning a smile from everyone around him always made his days that much better. His heart was warm and sang a cheerful tune that rang through his chest and head and to his soul. Despite his age, he was as playful as a much younger man. He was a touchy-feely guy, warm hands bore warm hearts so he’d laugh. Or so he’d used to. 

William Afton had cold hands. But Jeremy knew his heart was as cold as ice, if not colder. He was sure there was a piece of metal in the other man’s chest, maybe a clock and instead of beating with blood – it would tick in a timely manner. He could imagine a clock in William Afton’s chest, the face always changing and made with too many hands that pointed to too many different times. Some spun too quickly and others too slowly and some not at all. He was sure instead of lungs were two balloons, inflating and deflating promptly. His bones were made of iron and joints borrowed from the robotics. Yes, yes, a robot wouldn’t do the things that William Afton has done – no human could do those things. A robot with a hallow chest that goes tick, tock, tick, tock. 

William’s hands were so cold, Jeremy only knew due to William holding his shoulders and hearing Mike say so. He never touched William. He wore fake skin that he stole from someone but Jeremy doesn’t know who – he’s never heard of a person missing their skin. He hoped that person wasn’t too cold. 

He once saw Mike talking with William, he wasn’t sure about what but he never asked. He could hear snippets and bits, but nothing serious. Mike asked if Mr Afton was sick due to his hands being so pale, Mr Afton chuckled and said no, only for Mike to take his hand between both of his own and hold it firmly. Jeremy knew Mike’s hands, though small, were quite warm. Seeing Mr Afton blush up pink at the notion and hurriedly look away as Mike offered to help warm them with that sweet smile he does. Jeremy found the whole scene touching until he remembered it was William Afton. Mike’s hands reminded Jeremy of a doll’s hands; small and pale and soft, but his nails were painted black and sometimes he wore a ring. 

Jeremy looked over at Mike’s hands but only sees the bandages, the cuts, the bruises, the small cast on his index and middle fingers, and knew damn well that the missing nail was on one hand. Jeremy’s own hand slowly reached over and took up Mike’s, wary of the wounds, and ever so carefully held it in his own. The teen perked up and blinked a few times as he stared at it, then to Jeremy, smiling faintly after a moment. Jeremy smiled back. A comforting notion. Jeremy missed that from the youth who had a younger brother-like friendship to him.

Jeremy missed Mike. He missed Paul, too.

Taking a long drag from his cigarette, he couldn’t gather the strength to look up at the man standing with him. Sitting on the balcony of his apartment, Jeremy stared out solemnly at the rain drizzling out across the small city. Hurricane, he liked it here, it was quiet and calm up until recently. He loved to sit out and watch the rain. This was different. This wasn’t the cool cleanliness of an afternoon shower, this was cold and harsh, fat droplets of water falling to their doom from their heavenly home above. 

“Tell me what happened,” the man repeated in a soft tone, stepping closer to Jeremy, “Please, you were there that night. I know you saw what happened to him.” 

The older man tapped out his smoke off the side of the balcony wall and folded his arms across it, watching the rain drip off the roof and onto his hand. He shook his head slowly. He didn’t want to remember it anymore. The other man continued after a moment. 

“I saw the bottles when I came in, ya’ know,” Jeremy paused, “How much did you drink?” 

“What does it matter?” 

“You earned those chips, they were with you every step, remember that?” Of course, he remembered that. His heart began to grow sore in his tightened chest. Jeremy waved him off in a dismissive action. “The police suspect you. You’re the prime suspect, Jeremy. I left the force, but friends still talk, they asked if I knew where you were. This was just a crap-shoot to find you. If they want you, they’ll find you.” 

“Let them take me,” the older man tiredly muttered, “I didn’t do anything. You and I both know I wouldn’t hurt them.” 

“The police don’t.” 

Jeremy frowned and brought his cigarette back to his lips, sucking on it loosely. The grey smoke slipped out through a short blow. “I’m sorry, Brenton,” he mumbled again, “I tried to keep him safe and I couldn’t. I promised you that I would protect him and… And I couldn’t.” His fingers ran through his hair and gripped gently, his eyes staring down at the concrete below. “I couldn’t do anything. I don’t know what you want me to do, I can’t do anything anymore. I’m useless here.” 

“You’re not,” Brenton stepped up and grabbed Jeremy’s shoulder, the older man looking down at it. After a moment of thought, Jeremy’s hand slid over Brenton’s to give a small squeeze. “Tell me what happened.” 

“People die when they talk about the things in that place. Somehow or another, they die when they open their mouths.” Jeremy began as he looked back out at the rainy city, “If I tell you, I’ll die, too. And so will you. That ain’t a threat, it’s just a warning.” Brenton squeezed his shoulder lightly and moved around to sit beside the man, staring intently at him. 

“I need to know. It’s, it’s driving me insane, you don’t understand.” Brenton mumbled. “Tell me what happened to my brother. Tell me what happened to Mike.” Jeremy took a deep breath, smashed out his cigarette, and began to speak after some hesitation, 

“I lied to you. First of all, I had to lie a lot. Don’t be offended, I had to lie to everyone. I lied to coworkers about everything being okay, I lied to parents saying we would find their kids, I lied to you and Mike and Paul and said they would be safe. Do you remember a few weeks back when I rang ya’ up and said I took Mike home for the night ‘cus he got sick and threw up everywhere? That, that was sorta’ a lie. But it was still a lie. He told me to lie, he always tells me to lie.” Jeremy folded his arms in his lap and stared out, speaking before thinking, his voice soft and gravely. “It wasn’t puke, it was… Something else all over him. Something I’ve never seen before. Makes me sick just thinking about it. I, I don’t know what it was entirely. But it came from the Freddy in the back. He tipped it over trying to look inside, I think. I’m not sure. I didn’t see that much. But, yeah, anyway. Uh, Afton, I called Afton. He told me to take Mike home and make sure he was cleaned up.”

“So he showered here?” 

“Yeah, Afton took our dirty uniforms and gave us clean ones, too.” Jeremy shook his head and pushed the hair from his face to tuck behind his ear. 

“… What was in the suit, Jeremy?” 

“Paul,” Brenton tensed up, and after a thoughtful silence, Jeremy resumed, “Paul was in the suit. It looked like he had been in there for months but it couldn’t be true. The suit was empty during the afternoon. When I got back to work a few days later, the suit was clean and back to use on stage, but no one mentioned Paul in it. I even asked Afton about it and, and he just… I don’t know. He brushed it off. He just kinda’ smiled and told me it was taken care of. I checked the tapes and they were cleaned, our names were wiped off the scheduling that night and timesheets too, even the pay for that night wasn’t counted for. It’s like we were never there. I was starting to think we, that, that we weren’t actually there and it was just some horrible dream. But then Mike stopped coming to work and it hit me all over again that it did happen. We found Paul’s body and suddenly he was gone.” He gestured vaguely to the ashtray and as if to demonstrate, or perhaps it was just good timing, he reached over and dumped the ashes into a small rubbish bin in the corner. He reached out into the rain to allow it to rinse it out. Gone. But somehow always there. He sighed. “I tried looking around the place and couldn’t find a trace of ‘em, anywhere. No blood, no stains, nothing at all. You can’t even say his name around the place anymore, even if Mr Fazbear is out of the building. He made such an impact on so many people, a lot of the others just, just can’t… Know. They still have hope. Mr Fazbear still has hope. Everyone is still so hopeful that he’ll be back just like that. Like he’ll walk through the doors and smile like everything is okay and everything will be normal again. But he won’t be. I don’t even believe it yet. I don’t want to believe I saw his… His…” He feverishly wiped his eyes and turned away his head, hands trembling. “… He’s dead. They’re all dead. Everyone is dead.” 

Jeremy began to weep, his hand covering his eye and hair snaking through his fingers. He couldn’t stop himself as tears stung in his tired eyes and dribbled down his cheeks, past his fingers, dripping from his chin. His shoulders shook gently. Brenton winced and rubbed slowly over his back, only then noticing the deep, dark bruises on the man’s bare shoulder in the vague shape of large fingers. His hand flinched back. 

“I couldn’t protect them! They’re dead, they’re dead! Oh god, Paul, Mike, B-Brenton – Brenton I’m so sorry, man. I’m so sorry. I lied to you, I didn’t want to, I wanted to tell you the truth. God, I just wanted to die. It ate me up every day I couldn’t tell you the truth. I, I couldn’t. I can’t. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t do it. I, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!” The man wailed and gripped at his hair with both hands, fingers entangled in his brown and grey locks. Brenton took a small step back as he watched the man crumble before him. “I couldn’t help Mike, I couldn’t help him. I wasn’t fast enough. I shouldn’t have let him go on off on his own. It’s my fault, it’s all my fault.” His hands began to shake, then his arms, then his shoulders. His body tensed up, his eyes wide, yet trembled. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” 

“Jeremy?” Brenton watched him for a moment longer before Jeremy collapsed, gripping onto his hair with one hand and the beam of the half wall with the other. The chair wheeled off and bumped into the wall. Jeremy’s world flashed white and grey and everything shook and tensed and relaxed over and over again. His head and body caught in a screaming match, overloading violently. It was happening again.

Soon it all went black.

Jeremy was sitting in the office when his eyes opened, urgently pulling the flashlight from the desk drawer. His heart was racing. Everything was vibrating and spinning, the textures wouldn’t stay still. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. His chest painfully heaved every forced breath. Glowing eyes shined from the darkness of the impossibly long hallway ahead of him, blinking and twitching but all staring at him. They always stared at him. He wanted to sob, to scream at them to just leave him alone. They would never listen. He couldn’t gather his voice as it scattered across the jittering tiles. More eyes blinked and jittered from the vents, just waiting for him to look away long enough. 

With trembling hands, the twitchy beam of light scanned through the office; flashing over paper decorations that giggled and danced from their pinned state on the wall, jumping over posters that eagerly watched him with silent delight, over monitors that had no gleam or reflection. He did a double-take at something standing in the hallway, a shadow darker than should be possible with vivid eyes staring back at Jeremy – muted hatred, loathing, pain in that glare. Jeremy knew, almost immediately, that he would die. 

The flashlight began to flicker as the shadow began to creep closer, head and hands twitching wildly. Jeremy couldn’t even weep as it stepped into the office. The first step in caused the tiles to begin to ripple and sway as if suddenly made of water. The monitors sank in first, then the desk followed. Jeremy gasped as the chair he sat in suddenly plunged into the watery floor. His arms flailed as the cold began to overtake him, hands grabbed at his legs and torso and arms wrapped around him the further. He finally could scream and it rang out through the office only to be eaten by the darkness. The shadow stepped closer and closer, ripples turned to waves that slammed against the office walls and threatened to break them down. 

In his last glimpses above the ‘water’, he saw children in the hallway. The light flickered one last time and revealed the shadows he believed to be Mike and Paul behind them. His head went under, sinking downwards in the suddenly red water. He watched his hair float around him, his arms reaching up above him as the surface raised higher and higher. Red flooded his vision, his mouth, his lungs, his being. In his last glimpse of life, he could swear he saw the face of someone staring horrified into the waters above. 

Someone familiar. 

He woke up after he drowned. 

The doctor, much later into the evening, explained to him that it was most likely the high amount of alcohol and not taking his medicine, with stress to add as a rotten cherry on top – that caused his string of seizures recently. Brenton remembered Mike explaining to him that the man was epileptic, he never mentioned the smell of old pennies that followed afterwards though. He’d need to stay in the hospital overnight to make sure another didn’t happen. Jeremy, wearily, explained that he had been having mini seizures for the past few weeks but they hadn’t gotten that bad before in a long, long time. 

Staring up at the ceiling of the hospital, Jeremy blinked in a slow daze; not sure what time it was but knowing it was late. The last few hours had been a blur and he was starting to sober up, he wasn’t sure which felt worse at that moment. His fingers curled and uncurled the sheets under him, trying to feel again, trying to remind himself where he was. 

He’d have to talk to Brenton soon. The story was starting and Jeremy didn’t know which page they were on. He closed his eyes. 

Nothing will be okay again.


End file.
